MADELEINE McCann: The McCanns’ libel case against Goncalo Amaral – Sky calls him “the Portuguese police officer who bungled the hunt for missing Madeleine” – will take place in Lisbon on February 9 and 10.

The McCanns have always strongly denied his allegation and in a 36-page writ lodged in June 2009, they accuse Mr Amaral of libel and breaching their human rights.

An unnaamed source is quoted:

“Mr Amaral has made the McCann family’s life hell and he has made himself rich in the process. Kate and Gerry want to stop him spouting his malicious lies about them and to stop him profiting from their pain, and the only way to do that is by going to court.”

The McCanns say Mr Amaral allegations left them “totally destroyed“.

The McCanns are seeking at least 1.2m euros (£1m) in damages from the ex-policeman, and if they win the case the money will go towards the search for Madeleine…

The country’s attorney general Jose Pinto Monteiro has cleared the McCanns of any wrongdoing over Madeleine’s disappearance.

BRITISH detectives are to return to Spain to investigate a possible gypsy link in the disappearance of Maddie McCann.

Round up the usual suspects. No proof that any gypsy did anything to Our Maddie. But, what the hell, no-one likes the gypsies, do they. What matter that you defame an entire race? And Maddie was being spotted pretty much everywhere.

A team from Scotland Yard have already spent three days looking into claims that the youngster was smuggled into Spain and taken to Barcelona… Now they are reported to be returning to investigate the theory that she was snatched by a child kidnap gang run by gypsies.

Reported where is not said. We can find no record of it.

Portuguese police have already investigated a report by holidaymaker Andre van Wyk that he had seen a girl resembling Madeleine being taken in a cart to a gypsy camp near Portimao, about 16kms from where Maddie disappeared.

Holidaymaker Andre van Wyk reports seeing a fair-skinned little blonde girl in the back of a horse-drawn gipsy cart three weeks earlier in Portimao. A woman in the cart quickly covered the sleeping youngster’s face with a shawl.

“It’s been playing on my mind ever since. The little girl looked so out of place,” he says. He is also suspicious about an encounter with a gipsy woman at Faro airport who told him no one would find blonde Madeleine because her hair had been dyed black and cut short.

The Olive Press adds:

Days later a British holidaymaker Jean Godwin saw a girl – ’100 per cent Madeleine’ – being dragged around by ‘gypsy women’ 35kms away.

But none of the Maddie spotters did anything at the time, nor took a photo.

Jean Godwin, 56, of Widnes, claims she saw her in September 2008. She said: “She was in the middle of the two women holding their hands.

“Her eyes were wide open and my attention was drawn to her large irises. The child was wearing what was clearly a black wig. She was about 3ft 1in and about five years of age. She was white with a pale complexion.

“I couldn’t sleep, I had my husband take me back to look. I’ve been asked how certain I am, I’m 100% sure.”

And then one of the women was found to be cleaning woman who was totally innocent. Still, gypsies, eh. You can never be too careful.

The Olive Press adds:

Her information was followed up by both detective Edgar working for the McCann’s and Portuguese police, but nothing was ever conclusive.

In other words: nothing happened. No-one was found. There is not a shred of evidence that gypsies kidnapped Madeleine McCann.

The Daily Mail has news from the Leveson Inquiry into media standards:

Mr Crone [News of the World’s ex-legal manager] also said he understood a representative of Madeleine McCann’s family gave the News of the World permission to publish the personal diary of the missing girl’s mother.

Kate McCann told the inquiry last month that she felt ‘violated’ and like ‘climbing into a hole and not coming out’ when the intensely private journal appeared in the paper on September 14, 2008.

Mr Crone said today: ‘My understanding was that the representative of the McCanns had given the OK, the permission to the head of the newsdesk at the News of the World, to run the diaries or extracts from the diaries. I think he had emails to support that.’

Mr Jay [Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry]: ‘I have seen some documents which on one interpretation of them broadly support what you are saying.’

Let’s hope the Metropolitan Police make a better job of the investigation that has so far proved nothing…